7. United Kingdom Independence Party Debate: A minimum price for alcohol

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:16 pm on 9 May 2018.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 6:16, 9 May 2018

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I have to say that I’m a little bit baffled by this debate, because I'm not entirely sure what we'll hear today that the Cabinet Secretary hasn't heard before, including some of those issues where actually we have some sympathy with UKIP. The general principles of the legislation have already been debated in this Assembly. Evidence has been taken by the health committee, on which the UKIP spokesperson sits, of course, and where some of the points put out in the motion were rehearsed and reflected in the Stage 1 report. At Stage 2, our own amendment for a 50p starting point was voted down, and it's highly unlikely to rise again, I suspect. So, I think that point (c) of the motion is actually meaningless. The place to have made a meaningful contribution to this particular point would have been at Stage 2, whereas UKIP’s blanket abstention meant a failure to engage with an important step of primary legislation, which, after all, is a privilege that is only afforded to 60 of us in the whole of Wales.

Our amendment, which I now move, reflects our shared concern about the possible impact on low-income households, but our amendment also sets out a separate concern about the likelihood of substitution by individuals who are dependent on, or at risk of dependency on, alcohol. As I said at Stage 2, I don't think this Bill is fully cooked either, insofar as the full suite of evidence is not there yet, and too much is being deferred to regulation. But, the way to deal with that, with a Bill that clearly has numbers supporting it, is to try and amend the Bill, which is what we will be doing at Stage 3. That's why, in this debate, I will give due notice to the Cabinet Secretary that we will be revisiting the issue of the evaluation report. As I say, I think Stage 3 is the best place to rehearse that. It arises from a Stage 1 recommendation, which was signed up to by Labour members of the committee and only defeated at Stage 2 by the imposition of the Government whip and the abstention of UKIP.

Once this Act is passed, it becomes a creature of the Assembly, not the Government, and so it is right that the Assembly decides what information it needs to decide whether this Act survives the sunset date. The information we think we will need on behalf of our constituents, and indeed the Assembly, in order to assess the success or failure of minimum unit pricing in five or so years, is listed here in the amendment. The Government is not restricted to that list, but it is these criteria that must be included in the evaluation report. Otherwise, it will be no evaluation at all. In short, just let’s avoid a row in five years' time if we get an evaluation report that doesn’t refer to these impacts. Thank you.